Enterprise's expectation to Daas suppliers

Hosting virtual desktops in public cloud service providers is an increasingly viable option than the built-in virtual desktop infrastructure. But what do you expect if you're going to deliver your desktop to DAAS vendors? Service providers are not inherently equal, so it is necessary to research each supplier's products before ordering the service. Some Daas vendors even offer free beta versions, making it easier to make software assessments.

Client Support

Although there have been some restrictions on client support, most vendors are now starting to support BYOD. This means that while some vendors are still relying on proprietary client software, many Daas vendors are transitioning to browser-based virtual desktop sessions. As long as the user is using a modern browser that supports such as HTML5 or Flash, it is almost possible to connect to the virtual desktop through any device.

Operating

One of the main considerations you must consider when choosing a Daas vendor is the desktop operating system it provides. Some Daas vendors do not allow users to choose which desktop operating system they can use. Other vendors may allow users to choose between three to four different operating systems. For example, Desktone allows users to choose between Linux Ubuntu,windows 7 or Windows XP.

▲ Figure 1. Some Daas vendors allow users to select an operating system

Currently, Windows appears to be the mainstream operating system offered by Daas vendors, and almost all vendors provide Windows 7, but some vendors also provide Windows 8,windows XP or windows-based terminal sessions. Of course, Windows is not the only operating system provided by Daas vendors; Some vendors offer a wide variety of Linux distributions. The current DAAS environment does not provide OS X, which is related to Apple's licensing mechanism.

Management Console

Although almost all Daas vendors provide a web-based management console, they can be used to deploy and configure managed virtual desktops. The management interface features provided by different vendors differ, but provide some common functionality.

Most vendors seem to understand that a single organization may require multiple virtual desktop configurations. For example, the desktop configuration required by the marketing department may be different from that of the finance department. As a result, most vendors allow users to define multiple virtual desktop pools. These desktop pools may be static or dynamic and can often be mapped to users or groups of users.

Another common feature of the management console is the ability to connect a virtual desktop to a Windows domain. The domain can be in the client or in the cloud.

Joining a domain may change in the future. Currently, the traditional join domain can only be used for windows-based virtual desktops. Windows Server R2 provides a new way to join a domain, although it still supports the traditional join-domain approach, but Windows Server R2 also provides a novel approach called Workspace join. The Workspace join supports non-traditional clients, such as virtual desktops running on non-Windows systems.

▲ Figure 2. Some Daas vendors allow users to configure virtual desktop hardware

Some Daas vendors also allow administrators to select the hardware configuration of a virtual desktop. For example, the engineering desktop pool consists of 10 static virtual desktops running Windows7, 1 CPUs per virtual desktop and 2GB of memory (Figure 2).

Application support

Applications supported by different DAAS vendors vary widely. Some vendors provide predefined application collections within each virtual desktop-such as Microsoft Office 2013 or antivirus software.

In addition to providing basic software products, some Daas vendors provide additional applications-such as Microsoft CRM, Visio, publisher, and project---for additional billing. Other vendors may allow you to install your own application on a virtual desktop, but if you want to use this feature, make sure that the DAAS vendor you are considering allows you to do so.